Listed software firm completes £20m fundraise
Sheffield-based software business WANdisco has raised gross proceeds of approximately $25m (£19.9m).
This was through an oversubscribed placing and a subscription of in aggregate 3,100,000 new ordinary shares of 10 pence each in the company.
It comprised 2,362,515 placing shares and 737,485 direct subscription shares, at a price of 650 pence per share.
The firm says that as investor demand exceeded the gross proceeds raised, a scaling back exercise has taken place.
It explains the fundraise will strengthen the Group’s balance sheet and provide further working capital, while providing an option to accelerate growth ambitions.
The new ordinary shares to be issued represent approximately 6.4% of the company’s existing issued ordinary share capital. And the placing price represents a discount of approximately 12.2% to the company’s closing share price on 11 June 2020.
Stifel Nicolaus Europe Limited and Beech Hill Securities Inc acted as joint bookrunners in relation to the placing.
WANdisco has also today announced its preliminary unaudited results for the year ended 31 December 2019, which include revenues for the year of $16.2m (£12.9m) down from $17m (£13.5m) in 2018.
The business has reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $11.7m (£9.3m) compared to $9.4m (£7.5m) in 2018.
It made a statutory loss from operations of $28.3m (£22.5m), compared to $19.7m (£15.7m) last year.
However, the company said significant progress with Microsoft and other high level partnerships underpins the Board’s confidence in its strategy and product focus.
David Richards, chief executive officer and chairman of WANdisco, said: “In 2019 we delivered on our primary strategic goal of cementing our partnership with Microsoft to embed Fusion into Azure which positions the Group for significant scalable growth.
“With the Microsoft Azure LiveData Platform becoming publicly available post period end as a paid service within Azure, we expect to facilitate a greater volume and velocity of deals.
“The future of analytics and in particular machine learning and Artificial Intelligence is in the cloud.
“Our partnership with Databricks highlights the growing demand for non-disruptive solutions for bringing data to the cloud. In this regard we are uniquely positioned.
“In 2020, the business is focused upon capitalising on growing opportunities as our relationship with Microsoft and other Tier 1 partners continue to expand.
“With the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, business is increasingly based in the cloud and the Board remains confident our product direction and strategic progress provides a strong platform to deliver growth in 2020.”
